THE SEA AND ITS SHORES. 1Q 



dredging, and thus get up the living creature from the sea- 

 bottom. All such shells, though they may look perfectly clean, 

 should be carefully washed in fresh water, to get rid of the salt, 

 that would otherwise hang about them, and prevent them 

 becoming absolutely dry, as cabinet specimens should be. 



Probably, after you have really seen something of the 

 exceeding beauty of the rock pools and the little marine 

 caverns, you will be fired with the ambition to start a small 

 marine aquarium when you return to your own home. You 

 really ought to be filled with this desire a month or so before 

 you seek the shore, so that you might provide a suitable vessel 

 or vessels, and allow the sea-water to settle down and the 

 contained germs of vegetation to start into active life, and 

 so be ready to support animal life. We will suppose you 

 have made some provision of this .sort before leaving home, 

 and now desire a suitable selection of creatures to fill it. My 

 advice is, be modest in scheming, and for a first experiment 

 start with creatures that consume very little oxygen you 

 cannot have better subjects than the anemones. These should 

 be conveyed not in water, but each specimen wrapped lightly 

 and separately in soft weed, and the whole packed in more 

 weed in a light wooden box. The pools should be searched 

 for a rough, uneven piece of rock, upon which small green 

 weeds are growing, and this should also be placed in your 

 aquarium as a suitable base for the anemones.- Most marine 

 animals travel better in weed than in water, which rapidly 

 becomes foul in travelling, and destroys all that have been 

 entrusted to it. 



